Alex Thorez

May 2, 2011

English 12

A Streetcar Named Desire – Staging Paper

Paige, Alex Weir and I chose to work on Scene 8 of A Streetcar Named

Desire. This scene was very important part of the play because it demonstrates

Stanley’s frustration towards Blanche and how he finally gave up and givers her

a ticket back to Laurel. This scene also shows the respect Stanley has towards

women. Importantly, the different points of views that Stanley and Stella had

towards Blanche were shown. During this scene, Stanley was aggravated,

Blanche and Stella were very upset because Stanley was yelling at them and

mistreating them.

We chose the particular lines that we demonstrate because they build up

to Stanley’s decision to give Blanche the ticket back to Laurel. When preparing,

we removed certain lines since they did not have a significant role in the scene.

While preparing, we also had to carefully consider Stanley’s tone of voice so we

watched the movie for an idea. We discovered that Stanley used a calm and

sarcastic tone. In aspects of stage direction, we followed the script to create a

more effective mood. During the process of rehearsal, we had problems. Within

our group, we had disagreements on the ways certain things should have been

done and acted out. We resolved this by listening to one idea and just going along

with their idea. The reason why we did this was because we realized it was a

decent idea and was acceptable; it didn’t have too many extremes.

My role in the play was Stanley. As Stanley, I had to make sure that I had a

firm voice and was serious. By being firm and serious, I demonstrated Stanley’s

masculinity and the way that he treats others. For this role, I was not sure how to

portray his Stanley, so as mentioned before, I watched the movie and tried to

imitate it in my own way. By playing this role, I realized the importance of

keeping composure and controlling emotions. The reason for this is because I

thought about what it would be like to be in the woman’s shoes and realized how

hurt I would be if my loved one was yelling at me the way I had to act as Stanley.

A difficulty that I had while acting a role was when Stanley had long

dialogues because it was more difficult for me to remember what they were

about. I solved this problem by having my script on stage but I made sure I was

not too involved in reading my script during the performance. I also had

problems knowing when I had to say my lines because I was not sure whether

the person before me was done or not. I resolved this by waiting at least two

seconds after someone spoke. Throughout this process, I learned that acting is

about reacting. You have to be able to improvise when something goes wrong.

Furthermore, I also learned more about the scene itself by acting it out. After

acting it out over and over again, I realized what the scene was truly about and

how each characters truly felt.